by An Liu
Summary and Key Themes
The principal themes of this chapter are various aspects of Potency and its attainment. As such, they complement the principal themes in chapter 1, which explore the nature of the Way and how it operates in the world. These themes in chapter 2 are the nature of human perfection, its different categories, the methods to attain it, its role in rulership, the tendency of human beings and human societies to fall away from it, and how attaining it relates to fate. Chapter 2, however, may be best known for its extended analysis of explicit stages of cosmogony that is essentially a detailed commentary on the famous infinite regress of stages of cosmogony from Zhuangzi’s “Qiwulun.”3 The crucial difference is that while the author of chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi is satirizing the attempt to ascertain a cosmogony (“there is not yet having begun to have not yet beginning,” and so on), the authors of chapter 2 of the Huainanzi see these mock stages as real stages of a cosmogonic process and attempt to specify the conditions of each stage. Rarely in the history of Chinese philosophy— or of any major world philosophy—has the first commentary on a set of ideas been so diametrically opposed to the original author’s intended meaning. This passage is important, therefore, because it provides the oldest extant attempt by classical Chinese thinkers to detail a cosmogony in philosophical terms.4
The chapter moves on in section 2.2 to musings on the relativity and brevity of human existence that are variations on themes in the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi, especially chapters 2 and 6. This passage’s debt to the Zhuangzi extends to using the image of the Great Clod as a metaphor for Earth and reflecting on the strange quasi reality of dreams, substituting a man’s transforming into a tiger and eating his brother for the Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream. The point of the section is that life is precarious and perspectives constantly change. Hence our most profound attachment, self-identity, is far from fixed and secure in a world of constant change.
The rulership of spiritually perfected human beings in a hoary past is first broached in the next passage (2.3), one reminiscent of the ideal primitive society envisioned in chapters 8 through 11 of the Zhuangzi. The Huainanzi’s version contains a significant difference, however: the rulers are not reluctant minimalists, as in the Zhuangzi, but are mystically adept sages engaged in government. The authors of the Huainanzi wish to emphasize that despite its simple and impoverished appearance, the primitive state they envision is a society rich in a harmony that transcends material concerns. This theme reemerges at the end of the chapter.
Notions of human perfection loom large in “Activating the Genuine.” This theme is pursued in considerable detail in sections 2.4 through 2.6, beginning with a description of a group of adepts simply referred to as “the Perfected” (zhiren). These are rare human beings who have directly experienced the Way and carry it with them throughout their daily activities. Whether in comfortable or in difficult straits, they never lose their awareness of the Way, which is a constant within them just as the pine and cypress trees retain their foliage through the cold winter months as well as the warm summers.5 They remain indifferent to beauty of form and music, riches and high station, because the Way is present in them despite all these temptations and transformations. They are like the luster of the jade of Kunlun, which can withstand three days and nights in a charcoal-fired oven without being diminished one iota. They thus maintain a profound awareness of the Way and remain unhindered by physical or geographical limitations.
Because of the centrality of the Way in the phenomenal world, the sages (shengren) seek the Way that lies within them by entrusting their spirits to a deep inner realm called the “Numinous Storehouse” and by “peering into Dark Obscurity.” Thus experiencing the Way, they use it without using it; they know of it without objectifying it. By doing this, they “activate the Genuine” within themselves. As explained in sections 2.7 and 2.8, when sages depart from the world, they retreat into an introvertive mystical experience that derives from turning consciousness completely inward and withdrawing to “wander outside the dust and dirt and freely roam in the activity of the effortless.” As we read in 2.9:
For this reason, sages inwardly cultivate the techniques of the Way and do not adorn themselves externally with Humaneness and Rightness. They are unaware of the demands of the ears and eyes and wander in the harmony of Quintessential Spirit.
This is to experience what is called “Potency.”
People who fall away from the Way and those who have never realized it are said to “lack the Utmost Essence internally” (2.9). When they perceive and interact with the phenomenal world, they cannot avoid becoming enslaved to material things. The psychospiritual devolution of individual consciousness is paralleled in the historical devolution of human society. When the Way and Potency are abandoned, Humaneness and Rightness are established and human society is on the path of losing the unitary consciousness of the sage and thus headed for ruin. The authors of chapter 2 trace this decline from an “age of Utmost Potency” when sages governed in accord with the Way, when all people existed together in a harmonious union and all things flourished, through the times of Fuxi, the Divine Farmer, and the houses of Xia and Zhou, down to the decadent present age (2.10).
The remedy for this disorder is the “learning of the sages,” which seeks to return human nature to its origins and the mind to its inherent emptiness in order to counteract “the vulgar learning of the age” that destroys Potency and intrinsic nature, vexes the Five Orbs, and belabors perception with external things (2.10). Particularly singled out as examples of this vulgar learning are Confucians, who seek nothing but fame for themselves and obsess over the picky minutiae of morally hollow values (2.12). In contrast to this inferior learning, the authors of “Activating the Genuine” assert that true contentment does not lie in these external things but in the internal satisfaction of wandering carefree at the boundaries of Something and Nothing, of life and death.
To the authors of chapter 2, all humans possess innate natures that contain the tendencies of the senses to clearly perceive their sense objects. Only sages use their nature to cultivate their innermost potential. How do they do this? They work with the spirit, the basis of consciousness which in turn is the storehouse of the mind. Its tendency to be still and calm is disrupted by desires caused by the senses’ engagement with the many and various objects of the world. Sages discipline their senses and thoughts through an apophatic process of meditation in which they empty out the contents of consciousness until they can reconnect with the clear, bright, and tranquil spirit. With the spirit now present in their consciousness, they are able to mirror all external things with perfect clarity and not be enticed by sensory pleasures and self-aggrandizing goals. In so doing, they are united with the Way. Thus even if they were offered possession of the entire world and were widely praised, they would have no desire for such worldly things.
In section 2.12, the authors of “Activating the Genuine” criticize the disciples of Confucius and Mozi, who teach the techniques of Humaneness and Rightness yet cannot personally practice their own teachings. In contrast, when adepts break through to their own basic nature through the practice of apophatic inner cultivation, Humaneness and Rightness spontaneously result. This is the Way of the Genuine: they cannot be lured by profit, beauty, wisdom, and courage. Such rare cultivated human beings are conjoined with the Way even as they interact in the human realm. Only through inner cultivation are they truly able to govern the world.
Human nature is nourished by tranquillity; Potency is attained through emptiness; when external things do not disturb our internal realization of spirit, our nature attains suitable and harmonious expression in the world. Regrettably, many disturbances to our consciousness make this kind of realization very difficult to attain. Worries are generated daily by common occurrences so that our attention becomes absorbed in petty things and misses the significant ones. The spirit is easy to muddy and difficult to clarify. If even petty things disturb it, how much worse is it when the
entire age disturbs the spirit? Under these circumstances, “How difficult it is to achieve even a moment of equanimity!”
In the chapter’s concluding section (2.14), the authors admit that the ability to govern sagaciously depends not only on how the ruler cultivates his nature but also on the times in which he lives. In ancient times of great Potency, even hermits were able to attain their sagely Way. In the evil times of the Xia dynasty when royal cruelty was rampant and the natural world was in disarray, history recorded no sages, not because there were none but because the conditions did not allow them to achieve their Ways. So embodying the Way does not rest entirely with a person’s effort, it also depends on the era in which he lives. Thus even though the great sages of the past were able to nourish and realize the deepest aspects of their natures, the very fact that they were able to govern was their destiny. Only when nature meets destiny can it be effective.
Sources
As mentioned earlier, the principal source for “Activating the Genuine” is the Zhuangzi, whose vision of spiritual perfection is taken directly from the inner chapters of that work attributable to Zhuang Zhou himself. The apophatic techniques it suggests to achieve that spiritual perfection derive ultimately from Guanzi’s “Inward Training.” The ideal Daoist utopias of chapter 2 are closely reminiscent of those in the “Primitivist” chapters (8–11) of the Zhuangzi. The overall vision of sage-rulership in chapter 2 of the Huainanzi seems to owe much to the “Syncretist” final stratum of the Zhuangzi (12–15, 33), which advocates government led by rulers who have perfected themselves through Daoist inner-cultivation methods. Although phrases, paraphrases, and passages from the Zhuangzi abound in “Activating the Genuine,” they are never attributed or often understood in precisely the same sense as they are in the Zhuangzi (for example, the cosmogonic regress that begins this chapter). This indicates that the text of the Zhuangzi was well known at Liu An’s court but was not fixed into a final form or regarded as canonical by the authors who toiled there. It was influential but not canonical like the Laozi,6 direct quotations from which are invariably attributed to their source.7 When material that we now find in the extant Zhuangzi is used in the Huainanzi, it is virtually never attributed to the Zhuangzi.8
The Chapter in the Context of the Huainanzi as a Whole
Chapter 2 is based primarily on the Zhuangzi, whereas chapter 1 is based primarily on the Laozi. chapter 2 also focuses on Potency, complementing the first chapter’s focus on the Way. The visions of human perfection through the attainment of this Potency resonate throughout the text, especially in chapters 7, 8, 12, and 14. Chapter 7, “The Quintessential Spirit,” seems so close to this chapter in its vocabulary and concern for attaining spiritual perfection and its indebtedness to the Zhuangzi that it might have been written by the same hand. The concept of rulership by sages who cultivated themselves according to the apophatic inner-cultivation practices discussed in chapter 2 also informs other chapters throughout the work. The theme that the sage, however cultivated, cannot arise within a society unless the time is right is a frequent refrain in the text—for example, in 6.9, 8.6, 10.82, and 19.5.
The juxtaposition of “Originating in the Way” and “Activating the Genuine” at the beginning of the Huainanzi appears to have been a deliberate attempt to privilege not only their arguments but also their primary sources, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, as linked foundations for cosmology and self-cultivation in the entire work. We find another reflection of this linkage in chapter 12, “Responses of the Way,” which contains more than fifty short illustrative narratives, almost every one of which is capped by a quotation from the Laozi. About 20 percent of the material in the illustrative narratives themselves is closely similar or parallel to passages in the Zhuangzi.9 This heavy reliance on the Laozi and Zhuangzi materials seems deliberate, especially when combined with the following comment on chapter 12, “Responses of the Way,” in the Huainanzi’s postface (chapter 21, “An Overview of the Essentials”): “‘Responses of the Way’ . . . investigates the reversals of ill and good fortune, benefit and harm, testing and verifying them according to the techniques of Lao and Zhuang.”10 [21/225/19–20]
Thus the Zhuangzi seems to be one of the main sources for this chapter’s vision of the attainment of Potency and human perfection through apophatic inner-cultivation practices, a vision that the authors link to chapter 1’s cosmology of the Way based on the Laozi. When seen in light of this juxtaposition of the first two chapters of the Huainanzi, the reference in “An Overview of the Essentials” to “the techniques of Lao and Zhuang” may provide evidence of the authors’ attempt to build a new—or reflect an extant—intellectual tradition.
Harold D. Roth
1. These three voices are the authentic writings of Zhuang Zhou, the “Primitivist,” and the “Syncretist.” The Zhuangzi is a layered text, written by several hands over a period of time, and some of its latest portions might be roughly contemporaneous with the Huainanzi. See Angus C. Graham, “How Much of Chuang Tzu Did Chuang Tzu Write?” in A Companion to Angus C. Graham’s Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, by Harold D. Roth, Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, no. 20 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 58–102. Indeed, the text may have been edited into something like its received form at the court of Huainan; see Harold D. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1991), 79–128.
2. Grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, 7 vols. (Paris: Institut Ricci, 2001), 2:109, lists the primary meanings of chu as “commencer, entreprendre; bouger, mettre en movement.”
3. Charles LeBlanc, “From Cosmology to Ontology Through Resonance: A Chinese Interpretation of Reality,” in Beyond Textuality: Asceticism and Violence in Anthropological Interpretation, ed. Gilles Bibeau and Ellen Corin (Paris: Mouton de Bruyter, 1995), 57–77; Michael Puett, “Violent Misreadings: The Hermeneutics of Cosmology in the Huainanzi,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 (2000): 29–47.
4. A few texts of the Warring States period, including the Chu silk manuscript and the Guodian text Taiyi sheng shui (The Grand One Generates Water), contain what might be termed mythological cosmogonies.
5. See 2.4. This is evidently an allusion to Analects 9.27: “The Master said, ‘When the year becomes cold, then we know how the pine and the cypress are the last to lose their leaves.’” The next line in the Huainanzi makes explicit the comparison with the sage.
6. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?”
7. As we point out in both the general introduction and the introduction to chap. 12, the Laozi is one of only four sources that are almost invariably attributed in the Huainanzi; the others are the Odes, the Documents, and the Changes.
8. If the Zhuangzi had been edited into something like its final form before or during the decade in which the Huainanzi was being composed (150–140 B.C.E.), it seems likely that it would have been considered a canonical source by the Huainan masters, given its influence in some of the Huainanzi chapters, particularly 2 and 7. Had that been the case, it then seems likely that passages quoted from the Zhuangzi would have been attributed to their source. The lack of such attribution is one reason that I concluded that the fifty-two-chapter Zhuangzi that represented the text in its most complete original form was compiled at Liu An’s court after the Huainanzi was completed in 139 B.C.E. See n. 1.
9. See the introduction to chap. 12.
10. That is, Laozi and Zhuangzi.
Two
2.1
[1] There was a beginning.
[2] There was not yet beginning to have “There was a beginning.”
[3] There was not yet beginning to have “There was not yet beginning to have ‘There was a beginning.’”
[4] There was Something.
[5] There was Nothing.
[6] There was not yet beginning to have “There was Nothing.”
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br /> [7] There was not yet beginning to have “There was not yet beginning to have ‘There was Nothing.’”1
[1] What is called “There was a beginning”:
Pell-mell: not yet manifest;
buds beginning, sprouts emerging;
not yet having shape or outline.
Undifferentiated, wriggling, it is on the verge of desiring to be born and flourish but not yet forming things and categories.
[2] [What is called] There was not yet beginning to have “There was a beginning”:
The qi of Heaven beginning to descend;
the qi of Earth beginning to ascend;
yin and yang mixing and meeting;
mutually roaming freely and racing to fill the interstices of time and space,
enveloping Potency and engulfing harmony;
densely intermingling;
desiring to connect with things but not yet having formed boundaries and bodies.
[3] [What is called] There was not yet beginning to have “There was not yet beginning to have ‘There was a beginning’”:
Heaven engulfing harmony but not yet letting it fall;
Earth embracing the vital energy but not yet letting it rise;
empty and still,
inert and isolated,
Nothing and Something were a matched pair.
The vital energy pervaded and greatly penetrated Dark Obscurity. [2/10/14–19]
[4] [What is called] “There is Something”:
Speaks of the flourishing of the myriad things. The roots, trunks, branches, and leaves were verdant and abundant, bountiful and brilliant. [Insects] wriggled and moved, crawled and walked, crept and gasped. [All these things] could be touched, grasped, and enumerated.
